Have you seen those blue-and-black bikes dispersed around Tacoma? You can rent them
E-bikes have joined electric scooters in an expansion of Tacoma’s micro-mobility partnership with Razor company in late May.
Razor deployed 40 blue-and-black e-bikes around Tacoma. E-bikes and scooters cost $1 to unlock and 39 cents per minute to ride, California-based Razor says. Razor plans to increase their prices to 50 cents a minute after July 4.
Electric scooters have been available for anyone in Tacoma to use since May 2021. The program proved a success in the first two years, encouraging e-bikes to join Tacoma’s micro-mobility program.
With the program active for almost a month, numbers show higher proportional usage rates for bikes than the first month of electric scooter use.
Records show 400 unique e-bike rides in the first three weeks of the program, with an average of 40 e-bikes around Tacoma at any given time, Razor says.
“We started with the electric scooters and heard a lot of community feedback that there was a desire to get bike share in Tacoma,” said Liz Kaster, the city’s senior active transportation planner.
The electric scooter program started slowly while residents got used to the new mobility option, with 869 unique uses on an average of 159 available scooters during the first month of the program in 2021.
Scooter ride numbers peaked at almost 9,000 unique users in both July 2021 and 2022. The News Tribune obtained data from a public records request.
“Riders and the [Tacoma] community seem happy with the availability and alternate mode of transportation,” said Brent Engle, chief financial officer of Razor.
The e-bikes top out at 15 mph and include an adjustable seat, two lights and a front basket. They can be parked at any bike rack in the city, using their integrated lock system.
The 250 electric scooters strewn about Tacoma can reach up to 15 mph. They can be ridden on roadways with a maximum speed of 25 mph or lower, and higher speed roadways with bike lanes. Scooters come with lights, an adjustable seat and a front basket.
The City of Tacoma has heard concerns about a lack of bike racks in the first month of the program.
“We’ve been doing a push to really get as many bike racks out and installed as possible to make that easy,” Kaster said.
It is legal in Tacoma to bike and scooter on the sidewalk, as long as you’re yielding to pedestrians. E-bikes can also be ridden in bikes lanes, cycling tracks and roadways unless prohibited on a limited access highway.
You can find a map of existing and planned bikeways and a list of acceptable areas to ride bikes and scooters on the city’s website. For the initial stages of e-bike rollout, they cannot be ridden along the Ruston waterfront.
In an effort to spread mobility to people in need, Tacoma and Razor have created an affordability program. Users who qualify for any state, local or federal assistance program are eligible for the Razors affordability program, where you can get a 50 percent discount on rides.
You can sign up for the program at https://razor.com/share/affordability-program/.
“Micro-mobility is one way that we can help increase access to active transportation modes,” Kaster said.
This story was originally published June 29, 2023 at 5:15 AM.
